The comeback a la Ajith Agarkar's!

And I have returned to the city of dreams - Mumbai. For the uninformed, I have joined an ad-production company Lighthouse Productions. The package is pretty decent but the work - gosh! Its quite hectic but very exciting and interesting. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined of working for such an organization after graduating from an IIM! I'd always wanted to do something different and recession offered me the perfect excuse to try something like this..

But the best part about this job is there is no monotony. Zilch! One day you're scouting for locations for a fashion magazine shoot with Arjun Rampal whereas the next day, you're working on the execution of an ad campaign for an international brand apparel (its all hush-hush here.. no names) Of course there is that occasional trip to the police station to settle a
difference of opinion :P Yes, we were taken to a police station in a police jeep! Gave me an adrenaline rush! :D And I must say that these police jeeps are spacious and very airy.

Now that I've explained my absence from blogosphere (in very vague terms) lets move on. To the city of dreams - Mumbai. Mumbai is a completely different experience. The city is cramped for space. Be it buses, trains, footpaths or the lanes - you'd feel suffocated because there are people everywhere! (quite contrary to Calicut) And it's not exactly a good thing for someone with big feet. The city looks like Santa Claus's toy factory just before Christmas.

In spite of all this, you cant help falling in love with the city. Most of the people here are friendly.. of course there is that rare bus conductor who scowls at the odd non-marathi passenger or the ghutka chewing bhaiyya who insists on spitting when he is in the vicinity of humans. But again those are just exceptions. People usually are very helpful though they might not exactly sound polite.

As far as the local trains are concerned, they continue to fascinate me. There is the young college going chap with a spiky hairdo who assumes he is the RJ of the compartment. Then there is the guy from South in his early thirties who is yelling at his sub-ordinates in marathi for not reaching the office on time. And one can hardly forget the bunch of Gujarathi middle-aged men who love talking about everything - from the fake ipl blogger and the slumdog fiasco to the latest voteout in Roadies and the rising stock market.

It is difficult to miss the diversity that the city offers. The roads leading to the Dadar station are decorated with posters of movies like Jaani, Daata and Dashavatar - all dubbed-into-Hindi movies starring Mahesh Babu, NTR Jr. and Kamal Haasan respectively. Then of course there is the irony - a sly paan shop located right next to a Globus mall; an executive and a dabbawallah waiting for the same 10:19 ki tez local.

As I said earlier, one cant help falling in love with this city.